Lanyon Quoit

Lanyon quoit is so famous that perhaps it needs little in the way of explanation, though there is one here, we missed the layby and walked back up the road to visit it. one thing you will notice is the foxgloves, they graced the hedgerows everywhere, tips curling upwards towards the sky.  Cornish hedgerows are beautiful, unfortunately I had to get rid of all my 'wild flowers' photos because of space.  It is a heavily restored cromlech, and one of eight in Cornwall.  We had to drive for over an hour to get to this part of Cornwall, West Penwith is a treasure trove of prehistoric stuff.  But we intend to take a cottage next year so that we can explore this area, also missed the Zennor Quoit though we did make it to Zennor village and the pub, and it was sunny and warm.  LSs cousin also has suggested that we 'house sit' their cottage next year whilst they go away on holiday, hens, Lillie the dog and Kittie the cat!  Holidays are coming in quite thickly, our American friends have also asked to join them in France this morning for a prehistoric ramble but I am not too sure on three days in Paris.....

Duloe Stone Circle

It is a cosy little stone circle situated in a field in the small village of Duloe, sparkling white with the quartz that make up the stones, a small white crown in a field of green.  Maybe the stones were set around a burial mound, there is a mysterious lumpiness to the centre, but apparently up to the 18th century it had a field hedge going through which could also account for this.  A more detailed explanation is here.  

A friend told us the story of a lady dowser, who would not go into the circle because of the scary hooded figure of one of the stones, featured above, strangely shaped but felt no evil impulse there.......

  Attaching a video that pottered through my email  yesterday.  Sacred Land Video

The Hurler's stone circles

Hurler circles with Cheesewring in the  distance

We arrived in the village of Minions in cold, misty and very windy conditions.  The moors around sported farm animals and ponies, this part of the moor it was the banded white/black cows that were in evidence.  Small ponies everywhere, their foals at heel or fast asleep in a hollow of the land whilst their mothers grazed.

Great excitement on my part for eventually arriving in Cornwall, the pub/hotel was welcoming, room good and the food fairly good as well - pub fare.

How to describe this landscape, dystopia kept coming to mind, the land has been mined for tin and ruined engine houses dot the skyline.  Yet of course it is beautiful, the mine workings flow through the land as bumps, ditches and small pits filled with reeds and water, a green and pleasant land, the mist adding to the romantic industrial tone of the place.

The Hurlers Stone Circles, there are three, though one has almost disappeared, is about 5 minutes walk from the road just outside the village and they lie about half a mile from the Cheesewring, upon which of course they are focused.  What went through the minds of these stone age people as they looked on the weird shaping of the Cheesewring, honed by time and geology to a 'topple' of stones balanced precariously on top of one another.  Did they think their ancestors had built such stone gods? Giants placing each stone carefully, who knows?

On our first visit, the mist came and went so that sometimes the blurred outlines of the Cheesewring was there and then  would completely disappear, we had come in the time of the summer solstice, but the sun had decided not to make an appearance.  We met at the stone circle someone from the forums, Gwass and his friend, who were also there for the solstice.  

The two stone circles have a feeling of serenity and you can fall in love with them quite happily, they pull you in, they are not showy circles just part of the landscape and as you glance over to the two Piper Stones in the distance the question asked are they both part of the same equation, or are these two stones something different.

As we spent three days in Minions village, we visited several times, and also walked to the Cheesewring in blustery weather with Sanctuary and his dog Chief. The front half of this great outcrop of rock (sorry don't do north, south, east and west) has been heavily quarried right up to the strange assemblage of stones before it was finally stopped.  There is an early neolithic wall fronting this and several upright stones balanced precariously on the edge of the quarry, this is part of Stowes Pound Neolithic enclosures.
Silly people were doing the 'Titanic' act of standing on the Cheesewring with arms outstretched in a gale force wind, hopefully should they have been blown off there is a helicopter service in Cornwall.

One of the stones sitting in its own reed filled pond

Mistiness (and I need a new camera to get rid of the black spot!)

The two Piper stones

Misty visions

The Cheesewring is situated on the Stowe Pound Hill, which has Neolithic walling and upright stones that sit on the edge of the quarry,  consists of a larger and smaller Neolithic enclosures, used also at later dates.
Blue skies over Stowe Pound Hill and the Cheesewring.

Cheesewring

Neolithic walling

Upright stones at the edge of the quarry

similar

Notes...

"The Hurlers consist of three rings of stones, they stand on the open moor one and a half miles west of Upton Cross, just west of Minions. The stone circles are set on a line north east, south west and if we work north to south the dimensions are as follows diameter 110ft with 13 standing stones, 135 ft with 17 standing stones and 105 ft with 9 standing stones. The rings can be studied carefully and it can be seen that each ring would have had many more stones at one time, probably between twenty five and thirty five each. The group lies on a route way between the rivers Lyhner and Fowey and are aligned with a number of monuments close by, the cairns on Caradon and stone rows on one axis and long toms cross and Rillaton barrow on the opposite axis. It has been confirmed that the stones had been placed in pits with stones packed around them. They had been hammered smooth and the chippings strewn over the interior. Little was found in the stone circles. The central circle contained an upright stone placed off centre and the northern circle had been paved with granite blocks. Between the central and southern circle lay another patch of paving and a small pit. To the south west, 120 metres away are two more standing stones. known as The Pipers, possibly the remains of another circular monument or an alignment running down to the river Fowey. It is highly likely that the circles were built over a lengthy time span and a single site might retain its significance for centuries. Perhaps the central circle was at the nucleus of a monument collection of different dates.

http://myweb.tiscali.co.uk/andyspatch/danielgumb.htm#myself   Daniel Gumb's Country Deborah Bennett

Christopher Tilley on Stowe Pound Hill;

Cornwall's Archaeology Heritage

Animals I met along the way

Chickens in the sweet corn patch

Chickens getting comfortable, Boris the cock is in there somewhere.

Little grey foal scratching himself on the gorse 

Fast asleep

mother of the grey foal

Miserable pony and foal crossing the road in the village

Sheep at the pub

Highland cattle

Chief at the Cheesewring

Lillie cross between collie/'spaniel ( and her owners)

Rillaton Barrow

View from the barrow entrance

Our short Cornish trip revealed some treasures, the Hurler stone circles certainly being one, but further on the Rillaton Barrow situated between the Cheesewring and the stone circles was  certainly a barrow not to be missed.

Description aside, this large, untidy, desecrated Bronze Age barrow shown by our good friend and guide Sanctuary, did make my heart miss a beat.  Reading up on it, and I find in was restored in 1900, and had some archaeological work done in 1995 to the entrance,  this may have detracted a bit, but still.

Reedy pond on top of the barrow 

Entrance to chamber where the Bronze Age skeleton was found

Firstly this enormous barrow is pitted with stone robber pits, a reed filled pond lies in its centre and the entrance pit has been raised up so as to stop school children going into the hole and damaging the inside stones and the fluorescent lichen, which gives a ghostly green glow inside the tomb. The rather neat internal stones have ferns growing against them, and our proud warrior with his gold cup and bronze age dagger lies buried between the Cheesewring and the stone circles,  also has a marvellous view to the front over the surrounding countryside.

Interesting information of the work done in 1995.

Rillaton Gold Cup

www.cornwall.gov.uk/idoc.ashx?docid=470eb27a-37f3-4d2d

Cornwall

Cheesewring @ Creative Commons

Well tomorrow we are off, bags packed and plants watered, though there apparently seems to be a deluge tonight, and the summers are going to be miserable and cold till about 2023 according to the meteorologist's meeting yesterday, but of course they could be wrong... We are seeing prehistoric stones on Bodmin Moor, that is why you see the old Cheesewring at the top.  Trevethy Quoit will be one place we visit, I have a print of it above my computer, alongside The Cove, Avebury and Stanton Drew stone circle.

Been busy spinning bluefaced leicester wool, making cushion covers at the moment, and have pulled out my 'patchwork' knitted rug to do more work on.  Not excited by the long journey East to West, though we maybe go past Stonehenge on the A303, unless of course there are thousands flocking for the solstice...

Trevethy Quoit @ Creative Commons

The Cheesewring keeps nagging at the back of my mind, maybe this article

http://www.sewingdaisies.com.au/sewing_daisies/2012/01/tutorial-kaffe-fusion-blanket.html

Various

just about see the two small bees

Early bumblebee  Bombus pratorum;

So glad to see two of these in the garden, maybe there are more than one of these little orange tailed workers but as I take a picture, my heart is happy.  In the old house I would be woken up early by the hum of bees just outside the bedroom window in June.  This little bee loved the cotoneaster flower that spread outside, and I have even planted the same shrub here to attract them, though this one is almost on the verge of flowering so  this bee has been on the flowering thyme and chive flowers.

Bumble bees are a great favourite of mine, we should all grow as many flower types to encourage them and keep them around, protecting them from the unnecessary use of pesticides and herbicides.

What else, a plea from Chris Packham against the slaughter of badgers, scientific evidence says it is foolhardy and will not eradicate TB in our cattle, why can't we vaccinate?  Many years ago I joined a group in my village campaigning against badger baiting, we would go around in the evening checking on the badger setts, looking for the 'white van man' and his dogs, though the police advised against it.  There was a great old sett not far away, within its burrows badgers, foxes and rabbits lived, a happy symbiosis, maybe not, badgers are partial to a baby rabbit or two.

Badgers used to come to the garden at night, one night woken by the squawking of Hetty the hen, dashed outside barefoot with Moss, only to be confronted by Hetty fleeing up the steps with a badger not far behind, she had chosen to sleep in the nest box and the roof was removable and the badger must have pushed it off.  Moss dumbfounded by this strange creature did not know what to do, we all went in pursuit as Hetty lodged herself behind a water butt, and the badger knowing the game was up left the garden.  Hetty disappeared into the blackness and it took at least half an hour to find her squashed tight between a wall and a plant being very, very quiet! No harm done but a few tail feathers lost.

So what else? a trip out the Cats pub today to celebrate Father's day............

Cottage on the way to the Cats pub

pretty Aquilegia surrounded by yellow feverfew at the Cats Pub

trailing rose

Books

Wild roses at the moment still capture the  rural nature that once existed in England.

The Plot by Madeleine Bunting;  Almost finished and something that has given me food for thought.  She has almost dissed my ideas of a romantic British landscape into the perceived vision of what we would like it to be and the reality which is somewhat different.  We can look back at the romanticised visions of Edward Thomas and Massingham, but the new suburban estates in their time though welcome to their inhabitants with indoor loos and all mod  cons, to the artistic eye are 'characterless and innocent of design as are all its acts, debases the neighbouring countryside and suppresses its crafts and husbandry'.  Who has not frowned at 'mock tudor' basically because the soul says how can these straight planed machine made timber ever echo the beautiful curved and knotted oak timbers of the past.  Snobbery? probably yes, we still love the old for its presumed 'betterness' but know in our hearts that we like cleanable surfaces and roofs that don't leak, or as Massingham says of the cottages or 'put them in fancy dress' with roses round the door and tall hollyhocks growing round the tangled hedge Allingham style, look at any home and garden magazine and money has enhanced 'the vision' with exquisite furniture and Laura Ashley type materials

So what else, a deeper understanding of the vulnerable Yorkshire Moors which are always under the threat of fire, due to the combination of dried heather plants and underlying peat. Peat of course is a fuel therefore if a fire takes hold it can last a long time sometimes for days, and will burn back to the the rock eventually.  Sphagnum moss is a deterrent against dryness, it holds up to 8 times its own weight in water and keeps the ground wet, it also of course is an aid in stopping flooding as it absorbs the water but even the moss is in danger through acidification of the climate because of industrial pollution from places like Teeside.

Bunting brought me back to this book, such a different landscape America - not so lived in, Snyder is interesting on the loss of 'The Commons' in England

And then there is her relationship with her father, the subject the book, an artistic man who works in wood and stone,  Eric Gill his great hero, till he  read Fiona MacCarthy's biography of this rather loathsome man and his ways.  Bunting says of her father that he was misogynistic and misanthropic as well, not liking people had made him move from London to North Yorkshire for this reason, wanting a better way of life. He left the looking after of all the children, running of the household, garden and the self-sufficiency life style he wanted to his wife, who at a later stage  left him. There is a limit to selfishness.  The book is about her father's English Acre, historically it documents the many layered features of the landscape, Cistercian Monks at Byland Abbey, the nouvea riche of the 18th century, and then the farmers of the 20th century one minute rich with subsidies the next poor with bad crops and disease, a life lived on the edge.

Mind journeys

All nature has a feeling

All nature has a feeling: woods, fields, brooks

Are life eternal: and in silence they

Speak happiness beyond the reach of books;

There's nothing mortal in them; their decay

Is the green life of change; to pass away

And come again in blooms revivified.

Its birth was heaven, eternal it its stay,

And with the sun and moon shall still abide

Beneath their day and night and heaven wide. 

John Clare

This morning as I got up to make my first cup of tea, George Monbiot was on the radio, he was walking with Claire Balding and as I caught the last five minutes he was talking about the ecstasy of the natural world and experiencing the sheer vitality of life.  Where he was I don't know, probably in Wales in a valley, he likened it to a rain forest, the damp atmosphere, the ferns growing on the fallen trees took him back to  mesolithic times.  Suddenly I remembered a walk through Ebbor Gorge, the great rocky places of the Mendips, Burrington Combe and Cheddar Gorge. A place of magic the steep cliff like gorges, but Ebbor was somewhat different it also had the rain forest magic of tumbled trees and ferns.  A sunny open lit glade of meadowsweet shimmering in the shadows and light, great tumbled rocks that you had to climb over.  Except for Moss I was alone on this walk, cool in the shade of the trees but the day was hot, the path led upwards and then you looked down on a great mass of trees through which a rocky ridge ran through and in the far distance you could just see Glastonbury Tor.
Landscape or mindscape, which is it I wonder, of course 'escape, also has the same ending, this union with the natural world, perhaps I should learn to take these journeys again.  In a couple of weeks we go to Cornwall, firstly to see some megalithic wonders - King Arthur's Hall, a great square of prehistoric stones, strange it is not rounded, or are we looking at an medieval animal pound on the moors amongst the stone circles, who knows but the archaeologists have become interested, it just needs some dating evidence.
Then on to LS's cousin on the other side of Cornwall, and to explore things there, it will probably be my job to make an itinerary of things to see.  Have not been to Cornwall for years, when I was a child we used to take a cottage in Polruan, opposite Fowey, and I remember going out fishing for mackerel with my grandfather, in the evening we would go up the river in a fishing boat to a pub, and I can just remember the wild tangle of trees in the creeks there.

I used to take my daughter and her young son Tom plus my son Mark, there is only about 11 years difference between these two, for picnics to the Mendips, we even camped in the Forest of Dean, the car piled high with camping gear, two dogs, four people, the forest itself a cool place of trees and people using their leisure hours to walk, cycle or just brood. My son tired after his exams falling asleep most of the time, and that little creature below as we started to put up the tents, saying one of them was broken, no said I it is new but he was right and we had to go into Monmouth and hunt round for a camping shop so that we could  find and then laboriously fit a cord through that part of the tent, now he is at university studying criminology, time does fly.

Tom when he was little

Monday

I just love roses, this came through my email this morning, £20! for a rosebush, but what a feast for the eyes.

Now I am not a Chelsea Flower fan, the amassing of thousands of flowers and plants just confuses me, the spectacular garden layouts leave me cold, in fact I have not even bothered to look at the show on TV but I do like the old fashioned roses from David Austin.  I love a rambler tumbling over some trellising, maybe interspersed with a honeysuckle, wanton rampaging beauty, but of course there is the tying in, cutting down spent blooms, and the inevitable crossness as the long wands get tangled in hair and clothes...

Today monday, too many headaches at the moment, so I will note what gives pleasure in the garden, first of all we have 'the little brown creatures' in our garden, young starling fledglings and tiny balls of sparrows sit on the fence waiting for their mother to feed them seed.  The starling babes badger their poor mothers but are in the process of being taught..... Last night a call from next door,  one fledgling not being able to fly, we tried to catch it but it went into their double garage amongst a great mass of bikes and other things so the chase was given up and food left.  My doves still give great pleasure, the female, lay on a sunny lawn the other day, wings slightly spreadeagled to catch the sun, and the male gently preened her, of course it could have been the other way round.  Found a broken egg yesterday on the driveway, such untidy nest builders, bet it just rolled out.

Feathery fennel with its dainty bronze fronds uncurling sits above the grey of sage, whilst next door saladings compete for space in the green tubs.....

The new cranesbills have produced their flowers, one pale pink the other blue....

the cranesbill sits behind the demanding upturned faces of the pansies

My new little patch, (dug and planted on Earth Day) got given it because the lawnmower can't get round the bushes! now sports runner beans and some wild flowers seedlings.

Reading at the moment Madeleine Bunting's book called The Plot, a biography of a small piece of land that her sculptor father bought and then built a small chapel upon.  It is in Yorkshire, just off the A170 near Scotch Corner, and it is more a history book of the area.  Tales of the old sheep/cattle droving tracks as they were driven down to the larger cities, the men staying for a few days to spend their money, whilst the dogs were sent home to be fed by the local innkeepers as they travelled on their way.

To quote Herbert Read on the moors;

"Mountains I have no love for; for they are accidents of nature, masses thrown up in volcanic agony.  But moors and fells are moulded by gentle forces, by rain, water and wind and are human in their contours and proportions, inducing affection rather than awe"

Perhaps he should have gone on to say that caught up on the moors in stormy weather was perhaps not the best place to be, or indeed in snow, the prehistoric way marking stones that follow our favourite road across the moor tells a different tale.

A mullien finding itself overlooking the Somerset Downs.